"PARIS: Europe sank even deeper into recession than the United States in the closing months of last year, according to figures published Friday, as finance ministers of leading industrialized nations gathered in one of the worst-affected countries, Italy, for discussions on the crisis.
...
But McKeown said she had run the numbers for the major euro-zone economies back to 1970 and found only one other quarter that was even close to as bad as the latest one: the fourth quarter of 1974, when the economy was reeling from the oil shock and a plunge in stock prices. In that quarter, the main euro-zone economies fell by a combined 1.2 percent."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/13/business/euecon.php

Linked from drudge